He Forgets
by oh help
Summary: He can't quite shake those muggle instincts. In four parts: Dean Thomas throws punches.


I don't think I'm happy with how this came out, but I just wanted it _out_.

* * *

1.

Dean doesn't stay for the rest of the party. If anyone notices him slip up to the dormitories, they don't call him out on it. Perhaps no one expects better of him. He does not disappoint.

Seamus follows him, after he's managed to grab a couple butterbeers, of course. The bottles clink together between the fingers of one hand. "You alright, mate?"

"Yeah." Dean takes one and twists it open. "Still a bit... I don't know. But as alright as I can be."

"It's not worth worrying about," Seamus assures him. "No one needs a bitch like that."

Dean winces as his friend badmouths Ginny so casually. "It's not as if we're still together," he says. "She's perfectly within her rights."

"Still, a damn short turnaround she's got." Seamus takes a long swig of butterbeer. "Always been like that, hasn't she? Bit of a slag if you ask me."

"Don't talk about her like that."

"Dean, she's been treating you awfully. I'll talk about her how I like."

"I didn't treat her very well either, I guess," says Dean. "It was just an all-around bad relationship. Glad to be rid of it."

"So's she, apparently. Snogging Harry out in front of God and everybody." Seamus snorts. "Why're you defending her? She's been a right cunt, mate-"

And Dean swings his fist at the side of Seamus's head.

"I- Dean!" He reels backward, his hands flying to his face. "Are you mad?"

"I said, don't talk about her like that," mutters Dean, still too angry to be shocked about what he's done.

"I'm just trying to make you feel better!"

"Yeah, well you can do that without being an arse." His breathing slows a little, and his eyes soften as he looks at Seamus, bent over in pain on his bed. "Oh, come here. Let me see that."

"It's just a bruise," grumbles Seamus as he looks up. "Don't worry about it."

Dean lifts his chin with one hand and squints. "Are you sure?"

"Yeah, I'm sure, get off me." Seamus lightly swats his hand away. "Is this what muggles do instead of hexing each other?"

"Suppose so."

They're not down there, anymore, you know," he says after a moment. "Harry and Ginny. If you want to come and finish out the party."

"I don't know, Seamus."

"I think it could be good for you."

Dean is reluctant, he doesn't want anyone's eyes or anyone's pity, but his best mate is telling him to go, so he does. "Alright, alright. Fine."

2.

He forgets he has a wand until they take it. And by then it's too late. Ted's dead, Dirk's dead, Gornuk's dead, and he is lying on the wet forest floor, immobile.

There was a plan. They had gone over it time and time again, because they all knew that an attempt at their capture bordered on the inevitable. Disarm first, then stun, then get out – with the others if you can, alone if you have to. There were long discussions around the fire about how to gain any sort of upper hand in a variety of hypothetical situations. Dean had even passed along a couple old tips and tricks from his days in the D.A., pleased that he was able to teach grown men a few things.

They were at the ready, constantly. They didn't set down their wands for a second, not even to sleep or to take a piss. Each sound in the woods was a cause for alarm. It was no way to live, but it was worth it to survive.

He can hear Griphook, tied up, still thrashing behind him, and then a muttered spell and it stops. "Fuckin' goblins," one of them mumbles darkly. "Better not give us trouble like your mate, eh?"

"What about this one?" Someone else kicks Dean in the spine.

"Got to have some muggle in him, stupid bastard." A laugh. "Didn't even draw his bloody wand."

It would have woken him, if he had been able to sleep that night. While Ted was keeping watch, he was trying to will himself asleep with peaceful memories, to forget that he was in a sleeping bag on the dirty ground and not in his Hogwarts four-poster with Seamus snoring gently at his side. He rolled over, breathed out heavily and in again, and then out of nowhere there were lights and shouts and it was happening, it was happening.

It was with pure instinct that he launched himself out of his sleeping bag and at the nearest Snatcher. He didn't stop to think about the wand in his hand, and if he had he may not have even remembered what it was for. It nearly splintered as his fists flew at the man, over and over.

Someone was yelling something that could have been at him but he was too focused to listen.

The Snatcher's nose cracked and bled under his fist, and as the man stumbled back with a noise of pain, Dean was almost proud of himself. But when he whipped around to punch a second attacker a spell hit him between the shoulder blades. His limbs froze together, he fell. Someone caught him and held him tight around the neck, and he could hear the shouting now. It was Ted: "Dean, _DEAN_, are you _INSANE_?!"

Dirk paused to shoot a stunner at the man who held Dean. A killing curse hit him from behind in turn.

And that was when all hell really broke loose. Ted roared in fury and sent spells flying, everywhere he could. Gornuk threw a Snatcher against a tree with a wave of his hand. And Dean, he watched. Helpless as they went down too.

The last thing he hears is a low "_Episkey_." The Snatcher healing the nose he'd broken. There is a twist in in his already sickened gut.

And the forest is gone now - his fallen companions left to rot - and all around him is dark and hard and cold. There are people talking but he can't hear them. A thick, heady regret has boiled up within him and it's all he can think, all he can feel, all he can see. All that time spent learning how to be prepared, how to survive, and he just ends up jumping on his captors like a child in a schoolyard brawl.

_Stupid. Stupid. I could have done something._

_My fault they're dead. My fault._

3.

This time he vows to do everything within his power. For the first few minutes there is nothing he can do. "Stay out of it!" Seamus orders him and shoves him out of the way. And, wandless and useless, he waits.

He can't hear much, but he doesn't dare look to see what's happening. A flurry of terrifying what-ifs runs through his mind. He becomes convinced that no one is going to come back, that they've all run to their deaths while he is hiding.

And then bellowed spells and screams and heavy footsteps explode into the corridor. Seamus reappears around the corner and presses a wand into his hand but he is running, running, and though Dean deftly stuns the woman chasing him he doesn't stop. There's no time to run after him. A curse is thrown at him, and another, which he feels whip past his cheek and crack the wall behind him.

He stumbles out onto the stairs, away from Seamus and toward the unknown.

The watching and waiting is over, and everything has become madness. Jets of light fly every direction across the stairwell, and there are just so many _people,_ everywhere. Scrambling, shouting, frozen in panic. He pushes past one of the Patils, blocks a stunning spell headed for him and sends one back. And, surprising even himself, he laughs aloud. It feels good, satisfying, to use magic and use it effectively.

But he stops thinking when he sees Luna's blonde hair spilled out over the ground, a hooded man's wand lifted high above her. He doesn't think he's ever heard her scream. Something savage rises in his chest and he doesn't want to just stun the man, he wants to _hurt _him, and instead of performing one of the myriad curses he knows exist but has never used he slings a broken part of the stone balustrade heavily into the back of the Death Eater's head. He drops. In another time perhaps he would have stopped to be horrified with himself, think _what-have-I-done_ or _have-I-just-killed-a-man_, but there's no time, no time and no sense in that so he picks up Luna and he runs.

In an empty classroom, untouched by the destruction outside, he sets her down and she shifts with a faint moan of pain.

"Stay there," he says as he stands up again because he can hear the battle rage on and he isn't about to hide from it, not now that he can really help.

But she sits up. "I'm going back."

"Luna, you're not well."

"Neither are you, Dean. None of us are." He eyes are a little unfocused, but she looks otherwise serene for a person who's just been tortured. "We've still got to fight."

"You've just been- Just rest, just for a second." She is on her feet now and steadying herself. "Luna..."

"I'm alright now." She gives him a wide-eyed, soulful look, and a tiny smile that seems misplaced in the midst of war. "If I'd have been out there much longer, I'd be dead."

He is done arguing with her and just shakes his head before he turns to leave.

"Dean."

"What?"

"If you don't see me after this, could you find my dad when it's over?" She says this steadily and calmly and it's scary, a little.

"Yes," he says. He doesn't think about how all he knows of Luna's father is little things she's told him on walks on the beach because you don't refuse when making these sorts of promises.

As they look at each other their minds wander to Shell Cottage, to sleepless nights and quiet conversations and things confided in anticipation of war.

"You don't need to worry," he tells her because he doesn't know what else to say. "We'll all be alright. You and me, and Ginny, and Neville, and Harry, and the others..."

"You're very sweet, Dean," she replies, leaving out "but that isn't true," because they both know it.

And she throws her arms around him but too soon she is gone again in the chaos of curses and cries.

4.

Seamus finds Dean examining his raw knuckles, a tear in his dented canvas, and he doesn't ask.

"What am I doing?" Dean looks up with a pitifulness that unnerves him. "What made me think I could fucking paint?"

"You can paint just fine, mate."

"You're just easily impressed."

Seamus looks at the ruined painting, still mostly a pencil sketch with a few desperate strokes of oil that Dean had hoped would make it better. "What was wrong with it?"

"It didn't look like him," says Dean.

"Who?"

"Ted."

"Oh." Seamus bites his tongue. "It still _is_ really good, Dean, you know..."

Dean shakes his head insistently. "But it's not him. It's not anyone. It's just a face that doesn't mean anything." And Seamus understands that this is bigger than a painting. "I've just got so...much in me. And I haven't got the skill- I can't get it out."

"You could talk," suggests Seamus. "That's what the rest of us do."

"I'm no good at talking."

"Hell, neither am I." Dean snorts, and Seamus smiles a little. "Well, not about anything that matters."

Dean is staring through the hole in the middle of the nobody-face again.

"Listen," Seamus says. "I can't pretend to know what you went through, but I _am _here, alright? We're all here. It doesn't have to be just you and your bloody paints."

"I don't want a support group, Seamus."

"No one's forcing you to do anything," he says. "Just making sure you know." He perches on the desk next to Dean and just sits there, comforting in his silence.

"Do you remember," Dean asks after some time, "when all we would talk about was girls, and school, and Quidditch... Reckon that was all we cared about back then."

"Are you saying you miss it?"

"We were shallow," he says. "But we were happy."

Seamus watches Dean for a long while, something mournful in his expression, but eventually moves his eyes to the painting too. "You know, it doesn't... You could make this into something else. Seems a waste of good canvas."

"Maybe," says Dean.

"D'you want me to fix it for you?"

"No." He reaches for his wand on the desk. "I've got it. _Reparo_."


End file.
